Law enforcement identified 38 trafficking victims last year among estimated thousands

New data released today in the first annual Human Trafficking Statistics Report, compiled by the state’s Human Trafficking Commission, provides reports on human trafficking investigations conducted by local law enforcement agencies across the state.

Ohio’s Safe Harbor Law, also known as House Bill 262, was passed June 27 last year to combat Ohio’s human trafficking plague by harshening penalties for traffickers and offering trafficking victims more resources to heal. Included in the legislation was the mandate that the established task force, the Human Trafficking Commission, collect statistics and reports on human trafficking investigations, cases and arrests, for an annually published report.

The report chronicles 30 different human trafficking investigations, which have resulted in 15 arrests and 17 prosecutions over the past year. Some of the investigations are still ongoing.

Thirty-eight sex trafficking victims were identified by local law enforcement last year, most of whom where identified as white or between the ages of 18 and 29. Only one reported victim was male. That represents just a fraction of the thousands of total Ohioans who fall victim to human trafficking in Ohio each year; around 1,000 Ohio youths and 800 foreign-born were trafficked across Ohio. Thousands more are considered "at risk" of becoming trafficking victims, which makes grand estimates on the total number of actual victims virtually impossible.

Law enforcement officers were also asked to identify possible social and economic vulnerabilities that made certain victims more susceptible to trafficking, which included a history of being oppressed or impoverished and possibly experiencing alcohol and drug dependency issues, although enforcement wasn't able to distinguish whether dependency issues actually made victims more vulnerable or if the experience of being trafficked facilitated dependency problems.

Most traffickers were males between the ages of 21 and 29, according to the data.

In 2010, the state of Ohio was considered among the "worst states" for human trafficking by the Polaris Project, a national organization dedicated to preventing human trafficking. In a 2012 report from Polaris, Ohio was ranked one of the "most improved" states of 2012, thanks to the passage of the Safe Harbor Law.

However, in January, anti-human trafficking organization Shared Hope International gave Ohio a "C" for its human trafficking legislation, up several points from a "D" in 2012.

In Ohio, two high-profile trafficking cases, including that of captor Ariel Castro, who kidnapped three young girls and locked them in a basement for nearly 10 years, and the four Ashland, Ohio, residents who enslaved a mentally disabled woman and her daughter into forced labor, have recently made international headlines. In Cincinnati, City Council recently approved a four-pronged set of initiatives to battle local issues with human trafficking and prostitution, which are especially prevalent along McMicken Avenue and in the neighborhoods of Camp Washington and Lower Price Hill.

Ohio House Bill 130, which was recently approved unanimously by the Ohio House, would, if passed, further increase penalties for sex-trafficking and prostitution related offenses involving minors and disabled persons and also establish a spousal notification requirement for convicted trafficking and prostitution offenders. It will now move to the Ohio Senate for consideration.

Several groups are teaming up to sponsor a forum on Friday for candidates running for Cincinnati City Council.

So far, seven candidates — including one incumbent — have indicated they will attend the session. They are Councilman Wendell Young, a Democrat; Nicholas Hollan, Jason Riveiro, Chris Seelbach and P.G. Sittenfeld, also Democrats; and Kevin Flynn and Yvette Simpson, who are Charterites.

Fueled
by corporate donations, ALEC is credited with working quietly behind
the scenes to draft legislation that can then be introduced by
elected state lawmakers. Among its efforts, ALEC spearheaded the push
in Ohio, Wisconsin and elsewhere to introduce bills that limited or
abolished collective bargaining rights for public-sector labor
unions.

The
membership list that contains the names of the roughly 2,000 state
legislators and about 300 private-sector supporters who belong to
ALEC is kept confidential.

State
Sen. Bill Seitz (R-Green Township), who sits on ALEC's board of
directors, noted in the CityBeat article that the identity of its
sponsors aren't kept secret. They include the American Petroleum
Institute, R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Co., Coors and the National Rifle Association.

Now
with the help of Aliya Rahman,
an activist based at Miami University in Oxford who organized the
Cincinnati protest, The
Nation
magazine has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of
ALEC's model legislation. The treasure trove of materials is featured in The
Nation's Aug. 1-8 issue, which currently is on sale.

[UPDATE: Read more about Rahman's path to unearthing the documents here.]

In conjunction with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

As
The
Nation's
John Nichols writes, “Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for
conservatives to 'develop alternatives to existing policies (and)
keep them alive and available,' ALEC’s model legislation reflects
long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on
corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and
politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power
over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces.”

A ruling that resulted in a temporary halt in Ohio executions last week means there are 148 inmates on Ohio's death row with uncertain futures. Ohio's death penalty is currently under scrutiny, largely due to opposition that's been raised from documented failures to follow protocol in state executions.

In January, Federal District Court Judge Gregory Frost of Newark, Ohio halted condemned murderer Charles Lorraine's Ohio execution because Ohio has allegedly demonstrated problems over the last several months upholding the execution protocol the state put in place itself in 1981. On Feb. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Frost's decision, saying that because Ohio had been proven to stray from its own execution policies, it couldn't be trusted to carry out Lorraine's execution or any other death sentences. The next execution in Ohio is scheduled for April.

Frost is one of several advocating for the abandonment on Ohio's death penalty. "For close to eight years, the Court has dealt with inmate challenges to the constitutionality of Ohio’s execution protocol. During that time, the litigation has morphed from focusing primarily on allegations of cruel and unusual punishment to allegations of equal protection violations. Ohio has been in a dubious cycle of defending often indefensible conduct, subsequently reforming its protocol when called on that conduct, and then failing to follow through on its own reforms," said Frost in his written opinion.

He goes on to describe instances in which state agents lied to the Court concerning state executions, expressing frustration about the state's lack of commitment to constitutional execution. "No judge is a micro-manager of executions and no judge wants to find himself mired in the ongoing litigation in which he must continually babysit the parties," said Frost.

That's just a piece of it; there are other judicial bigwigs hoping to have Ohio's death penalty overturned, including Senior Associate Justice for the Ohio Supreme Court Paul Pfiefer, who helped write Ohio's death penalty law when he was a state senator more than 30 years ago. According to Pfeifer, he's changed his mind because he sees the option of life without the possibility of parole more moral and socially beneficial.

Evidently, most of the deviations from the execution regulations were minor paperwork technicalities. Huffington Post reports the errors included switching the official whose job it was to announce the start and finish times of the lethal injection and not properly documenting that the inmate's medical records were reviewed.

Those in support of the hold, however, make another point. Controlling life and death is the most important power the state of Ohio holds; if it can't follow minor rules that it set for itself, who's to say there won't be larger, more detrimental errors in the future?

It's difficult to tell whether or not Ohio will just get a slap on the wrist for its slip-ups or if reform will be seriously considered. The death penalty has almost always been a part of Ohio's history, since it became a state in 1803. Ohio ranked third in the U.S. for executions among the 34 states that have the death penalty in 2011.

Listen to Paul Pfeifer and hear more about the controversy on The Sound of Ideas radio program below.

Cincinnati’s solicitor says an anti-tax group is wasting taxpayer money by filing a federal lawsuit against the city without first contacting its Law Department to resolve the alleged violations outside of court.

Ohioans for Responsible Solutions launches chapters in Columbus and Cleveland

The gun violence prevention group founded by former
Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on July 27 announced the launch of
Ohioans for Responsible Solutions, which will continue the
organization’s efforts to support officials who back responsible gun
legislation.

The new chapters, in Cleveland and Columbus, are part of
Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), which Giffords and her
husband, retired Navy Captain and astronaut Mark Kelly, launched in January.

“People in the Buckeye State know the terrible toll gun
violence takes on communities,” ARS Executive Director Pia Carusone said
in a statement. “We’re excited about what the 18,000-plus Ohioans for
Responsible Solutions will accomplish because they represent a rich
cross-section of the community: gun owners and non-gun owners alike, law
enforcement officials, victims of gun violence, faith leaders, moms
and voters of all political stripes from every part of the state.”

Giffords’ organization says it is not anti-gun — Giffords
and Kelly are both gun owners — instead arguing that the gun lobby’s
influence has kept legislators from passing common-sense legislation
that most Americans support.

A Gallup poll conducted April 22-25 found 65 percent of
Americans believed the U.S. Senate should have passed a measure to
expand background checks for gun purchases and ban some semi-automatic
weapons, which the Senate failed to pass April 17 because of procedural
steps requiring 60 votes to pass. The final vote was 54 in favor and 46
against. Twenty-nine percent
of Americans agreed with the Senate’s failure to pass the measure, and 6
percent had no opinion. The poll had a margin of error of +/-4
percentage points.

In January — just a month after the shooting massacre in
Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults — Gallup found 91
percent of Americans support required background checks for all gun
sales. The poll asked respondents about each of nine key proposals
included in President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce gun violence. The
two least-supported proposals still had majority support, but these
issues turned out to be at the center of the legislation that failed to pass
the Senate four months later: reinstating a ban on assault weapons (60-percent support),
and limiting the sale of ammunition magazines to those with 10 rounds
or less (54-percent support).

Giffords has become one of the nation’s highest-profile
gun violence prevention activists since a shooting in 2011 that left her
partially paralyzed. Giffords survived the assassination attempt on Jan.
8, 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., when a mentally ill man shot her in the head
at a political event outside a grocery store. The man then fired on
other people, killing six and wounding 12 total.

Giffords and Kelly participated in the Northside Fourth
of July parade early this month as part of Americans for Responsible
Solutions’ “Rights and Responsibilities” cross-country tour promoting
the organization’s goal of advocating for candidates that support
responsible gun policies that protect both the public and the rights of
gun owners. CityBeat covered the event here.

“Stopping gun violence takes courage. The courage to do
right, the courage of new ideas,” Giffords told the Northside crowd
during a press event before the parade. “I’ve seen great courage when my
life was on the line. Now is the time to come together to be
responsible. Democrats, Republicans, everyone. We must do something.
Fight, fight, fight.”

Americans for Responsible Solutions announced this week
that its super PAC has raised $6.5 million so far this year and more
than 500,000 members. At this point it has not announced any plans for a Cincinnati
chapter.

No, this isn’t an effort to get men to scrub toilets, women to wash cars or any other such stereotypical complaint about equality in a marriage. It’s about busting up another stereotype – that only heterosexuals can live in a long-term, committed relationship.